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Personal Essays

Why We Cannot Be Part of the 54 Percent of Women Who Do Not Report Sexual Assault

Before the bombings in Boston and the explosion in Texas and the ricin-laced letters to the president and congressmen, two women quietly committed suicide, not I think so much because they had been raped — a traumatic enough event in itself — but because the crime had been broadcast all over the Internet by the perpetrators. The women in question had not only lost control over their bodies and their… Read More »Why We Cannot Be Part of the 54 Percent of Women Who Do Not Report Sexual Assault

Boomeranging Into An Empty Nest

I was extremely heartened to read in the New York Times that having a good and open relationship with your kids, one in which you speak frequently and they solicit your advice, is a positive thing. Not that I ever doubted that. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and the pudding that is my children — despite occasional high temperatures and other mishaps — have turned out… Read More »Boomeranging Into An Empty Nest

The Fight About Feminism and Motherhood That Isn’t

Motherhood vs. Feminism? Give me a break. The New York Times recent forum with that title is just another example of the mainstream media ginning up a false dichotomy and presenting two ideas as opposing when they aren’t even mutually exclusive. And for the writers in this false “war” to state that motherhood issues pose an end to feminism shows a frightening but clear ignorance of what feminism was and… Read More »The Fight About Feminism and Motherhood That Isn’t

Motherhood: The Fear Factor

After six hours of hard labor, I was told my son’s heartbeat was slowing. “Get him out,” I screamed. And they did, slitting me from top to bottom in an emergency C-section. I wasn’t at the hospital or with the doctor where I had received my pregnancy care. A torrential downpour at midnight just as I started my contractions (two weeks early by the doc but right on time by… Read More »Motherhood: The Fear Factor

Where is My Flying Car?

When I was in my twenties and could not even imagine middle age, I realized I would be 44 in the year 2000. That seemed impossibly old. But as I neared that age and the century neared its end, I was in a different place than I had been twenty years before. Y2K notwithstanding (even my sensible middle sister hoarded water and food for the impending doom), on New Year’s… Read More »Where is My Flying Car?

The South Can Rise Again, But Not Like You Think

A video depicting residents of Mississippi and Alabama as toothless, ignorant bigots is making its way around the country and, perhaps, the world. That video and the fact that several southern states have gone for Santorum and Gingrich in the Republican primaries has, it seems, confirmed the notion that the South, as a whole, is woefully stupid and racist. As a woman born and raised in the South who has… Read More »The South Can Rise Again, But Not Like You Think

Being Fucked by Republicans. Fun? Not So Much

(This post originally appeared on doesthismakesense.com) I’m writing this when I should be vacuuming. In pearls and heels and nothing else; well, maybe an apron, just an apron covering my front so that my ass hangs out, tantalizingly. In the hope, of course, that my husband, the only man with whom I have ever had sex, will come home and take me, there, in the living room, throwing caution (and… Read More »Being Fucked by Republicans. Fun? Not So Much

WHY Must We Constantly Re-Invent Ourselves?

I am feeling very inadequate. While I have recently, at the age of 55, moved to a new city and a house, completed a new novel, and said good-bye to my last child as she heads off the college; while I have, in the past six years ended two marriages and started a new relationship, I have not, for example: climbed a mountain, alone, started a cupcake business, left my… Read More »WHY Must We Constantly Re-Invent Ourselves?

What You May Not Know About Health Care

When in the early nineties I lived in Oxford , England, as the new mother of a six-month old, nurses regularly came to our flat for well baby check-ups. All of my medications and doctors’ visits and all those for my child were free for the first year of her life. My prescriptions averaged around ten dollars each, no matter how expensive they were. And I was only a temporary… Read More »What You May Not Know About Health Care